Yaymicro have announced that Yuri Arcurs has joined as a contributing photographer, some of his images can be seen here. Yuri is one of the leading microstock photographers and his joining yaymicro is a signal to other contributors.

istockphoto have launched a new premium collection called 'vetta'. Images have been specially selected from uploads submitted by istock exclusive photographers (previously known as the premier collection). The launch of the new collection has coincided with updates to the agencies search engine. Press Release

Both Mostphotos and Featurepics have announced they are developing improvements to their sites and asked their contributors for feedback.

Stockxpert contributors will no longer have the option of selling their images via photos.com following the announcement that photos.com will drop stockxpert in favour of selling images sourced from istockphoto. Last months announcement by istockphoto that it would be reselling images via the former Jupiter sites (incl photos.com) caused concerns that duplicates would be found if the same image had been uploaded to both istock and stockxpert. All the agencies involved are part of Getty images.

Shutterstock generated one of the biggest storms we've see so far in the ranks of microstock contributors when they announced that all non U.S. contributors would need to complete American IRS forms or have up to 30% of their earnings withheld from photos downloaded by non-U.S. image buyers. At last count there were 83 pages(!) of comments on their forum. A further announcement advised contributors to await further instructions on progressing the applications. Regarding the 'forum storm', to paraphrase what I wrote in microstock tantrums, "think carefully before going off like frog in a sock".

Also in previous Months

Lookstat recieved an additional $500k additional funding to further develop their microstock analysis software. lookstat review.

It was rumoured that Fotolia had received a massive 50 to 100 million dollar funding deal but doubts have been raised about the validity of this claim.

 


mystockphoto's picture

News Roundup

mystockphoto (not verified) on Thu, 2009-06-25 07:09
Hi Steve, careful roundup. I'd like to add that Corbis is rolling Snapvillage into Veer Marketplace. Veer has just opened at royalty-free contributors... another operation of business concentration: Getty and Corbis are moving in this direction. Best, roberto
Steve Gibson's picture

Veer Review

Steve Gibson on Fri, 2009-06-26 00:46

Cheers Roberto,

Yes that was perhaps an oversite not to link the veer marketplace review in to all that since they launched their contributor area this month, I've also to complete the isyndica review I started last month

Steve

Augusto Cabral's picture

Shutterstock

Augusto Cabral (not verified) on Thu, 2009-07-02 18:10
What is really annoying about shutterstock and the taxes is the total lack of information and answers from the support team. Almost everyone is totally lost! Cheers
Steve Gibson's picture

Shutterstock and tax

Steve Gibson on Fri, 2009-07-03 02:53

Indeed, we just sit and wait. I think it will all blow over in the end - I might have to eat my words on that, but it's always been the case that if you are outside the US and you earn money in the US, you just make a declaration online (type your name into the box etc)  that you are not a US citizen or trading entity and that's enough - it's been that way since 2000 as far as I can remember. They have a scan of your ID that might not be fool proof, but I think if there was a problem then in court the fact that the companies had taken your drivers license and you had made a declaration is enough 'due care' if it turns out your were fraudulently operating inside the US.

That's the way that veer marketplace deals with it (purely an online declaration).


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